Alfred Kazin's America: Critical and Personal Writings

by Ted Solotaroff and Alfred Kazin

Book Overview

"Alfred Kazin chose America as his subject, and his intellectual awakening is itself something of an American legend. . . . Ted Solotaroff's selection of his work is a fitting tribute, a book that will be a starting point for further reading, both of Kazin and of the native writers to whom he devoted himself" -- The New Yorker

Over the course of 60 years, Alfred Kazin's writings confronted virtually all of our major imaginative...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0066213436
• ISBN13: 9780066213439
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Criticism which makes us see Literature and The world in a richer and truer way

This anthology contains excerpts from Kazin's memoir writing, from his critical work on American Literature, from his essays on literary personalities. I was most surprised by personal essays on Saul Bellow, Edmund Wilson, and Hannah Arendt. I have read much about each of these figures but Kazin's descriptions of them bring new insight. His description of a walk across Brooklyn Bridge with a young ambitious Saul Bellow provides an insight into the remarkable powers of observation of everyday realities- a characteristic which would be one of the great strengths of Bellow's work. Kazin in his praise for Wilson's Civil War volume 'Patriotic Gore' helps us better understand the great strength of this most independent critic. Kazin too takes on in this work the major figures of American nineteenth century Literature and he makes us better understand the greatness of Melville, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Dickinson. Kazin as walker in the city as memoirist of his childhood in Brownsville is never dull, is always providing observations and reflections which lead to more inspired perception of literary works, and the world. I deeply enjoyed this work and attained through it new understanding of great American literary creators I have read and studied before.